It was three 5th and 6th grade girls and our town clerk who made my day last Tuesday, helping to answer the question: Why do we save items from our town’s history, anyway? Why not just send folks to the Internet, where they can read up on wars, migrations and how things used to be?

These girls often pop upstairs after school and ask if the museum is open – or if there are any jobs for them to do. I tell them, well, the museum is officially closed so we can work – with open boxes filling the tables and some of the aisles – but that they’re welcome to look around if they’re careful. They check out the WWII cigar thank you letters and the schoolchildren letters sent in 1911 to a sick classmate (Johnnie Winters). Then one of the girls (Grace, Rose or Lily) glances around the WWII exhibit case and asks if the blood-stained Bible is still on display. I tell her no, since the Civil War exhibit has been replaced, but, I could show it to them all the same.

I have to reach up high to get it, and carefully bring it down. Over at a clear table I show them the exquisite custom blue box made for the pocket 1863 New Testament by paper conservator and bookbinder Daniel Gehnrich. The box and repairs on the book were funded by the town’s Community Preservation Act. Prior to that, it had been wrapped in saran wrap, resting on a wire plate holder. I show them how the box doubles as a display stand so we don’t have to handle it, and where the supposed bullet hole used to be, amidst the blood-stained pages.

Together, we wonder how the blood got there, and what happened to the soldier. They read the label and see it was donated by a Dr. C.S. Hurlburt of Springfield, a dentist, who married Mary Wait Allis of Hatfield.

Sitting next to me on the table is a book I had gotten from the town clerk (Lydia Szych) earlier in the day, to add some numbers to our recently completed Mass Humanities-funded medical history grant, and it occurs to me these curious-minded girls might find the book as interesting as I did. I have them read me the title on the spine: Record of Dangerous Diseases, Town of Hatfield.

The book records all of the town’s infectious diseases between 1915 and 1944, including an outbreak of measles in 1918 (53 cases!) among schoolchildren and several hundred case of influenza in 1918-1919, resulting in at least 11 deaths. Coincidentally, Rose had just been looking at a book in the library downstairs that talked about the very same flu epidemic – and here was the Hatfield record of cases in our town.

We note that a girl of 7 who lived on Bridge St. contracted mumps on the same day, Nov. 17, one hundred years earlier. Likewise, Grace notes that someone contracted influenza on her birthday in October, nearly 100 years ago. They all make sad noises upon seeing that two of the children who contracted whooping cough in Dec. 1915 and Jan. 1916 – a 1 year-old and a 2-1/2-mo.-old. – died (see center image above).

One of the girls’ phones rings, and it is getting late, so I tell them to come back another day. I hear them say to each other going down the stairs,“that was fun…” And I think, yes, that was fun, and it reminds me why we are here.

There is always something special about children’s toys that have survived down through time. Not only do they speak to well-loved playthings and the sentimentality of the little owner and the family that preserved them, but there is much to be learned from the articles themselves. This doll’s dress holds a wealth of information, even in its worn state.

Click for larger image

This is a very practical doll’s dress circa 1860. It was used, taken on and off, possibly washed by the little child to whom it belonged. The threadbare fabric and the worn red edging suggest this was a teaching toy such as little girls and boys have always loved and used to practice sewing, dressing, laundering, and other parenting and housekeeping skills. There are certainly examples of dolls and doll clothes from this era that are pristine, unused and definitely “not for children" -- this is the opposite, which makes its preservation more remarkable.

The first thing that is noteworthy in seeing this dress is the fabric. The shade is dramatic and the style is expressive of the day, and we can use the two to make an educated estimate of when the dress was made. An innovation in dye technology created a colorfast purple or mauve dye in 1859; before that time, purples were often unfixed -- or fugitive -- and faded out nearly completely by our current day, especially for something as well used as this dress. So, we know this was made post-1859. The style of the dress also provides dating details. The sleeves are fully lined with tan cotton muslin, just as the child’s sleeves may well have been. The bodice, waistband, and very full skirt all mirror mid-1800s fashions.

Here is where we begin to get clues as to the seamstress: the red wool tape neckband and trim. If this were a grown woman making beautiful doll clothes for her child, we might expect a bit of black ribbon, perhaps a scrap of simple lace. That red wool is whimsical and indifferent to social ideas of what colors go with what prints. Between that and examining the seams, I feel very comfortable saying that this dress was made by a child, or at least by a less experienced seamstress. The hand stitching is serviceable but not fine or well-practiced, and we have in company with this dress crisp white over skirts that show a finer quality of work. To me, this reads absolutely as scraps of a fancy new purple cloth handed over to a child so she might make a dress for her doll.

There is even a nice blend of skills, as the construction seams are hand sewn (see photos above) and the hem is sewn by machine -- sewing machines being a recent arrival in the home following Elias Howe’s 1846 invention in nearby Cambridge, MA. By 1860, this technology was available to the home seamstress, but it was still a very new thing, not in every home, and certainly used under supervision. This explains the machine stitching on the hem, where there are few consequences if the seam goes a little astray.

Pocket! (click for larger image)

The last and perhaps most charming feature of this dress is the transitional pocket. Pockets are no longer always a separate item of clothing in the 1860s, tied around the waist beneath the dress, alongside the hoop skirts and petticoats. The seamstress gave her dolly a pocket set into the side seam. This is a complex process for a child, requiring multiple steps and a three-dimensional understanding of the fabric. It is also a beautiful practicality, that she wanted her doll to have a modern pocket, and she was imagining what her doll might carry with her.

Nonetheless, it would be easy to overlook, and it is a reminder to all who are interested in dating or learning more about objects to look inside and under and behind as well as straight on.

From a child’s plaything, we can not only make informed decisions about the date and techniques of creation, but also peek into the past domestic scene in which it was made. Such a lot of information packed into such an ordinary thing!

Meguey Baker studied early American textile history and material culture at Hampshire College. She is a member of the Mohawk Trail Quilt Guild, a volunteer textile conservation specialist at Memorial Hall in Deerfield, and does textile repair and conservation for private clients.

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Curator's musings...

As the curator of a small town Historical Society museum, I wonder a great many things. Am I alone in these thoughts that come to me while driving, or exercising, or falling asleep at night? Is it unusual to be constructing displays and writing copy in one's head for an enlarged museum space that does not, as yet, exist?

If you're wondering about the blog title, "Bird by bird," see my First Post for an explanation! Click HERE to read it.

When I'm not thinking about our museum or rehousing artifacts with my fellow museum committee members, I'm helping out with the Pioneer Valley History Network (of which I'm a board member), collecting or editing digital oral histories (see words.pictures.stories)or keeping track of my two teenage kids.